Targeting is an operation providing appropriate contents automatically according to usage environment, such as user preference for contents, performance of a terminal, and network characteristics. To execute targeting, a package schema describing usage environment conditions and the relationship between components should be defined. Also, the concept of a targeting service comprehends not only targeting of contents but also targeting of Electronic Program Guide (EPG) and/or advertisement. In connection with the targeting, the 27th meeting for the International Standards for TV-Anytime in San Jose has produced WD942. The section 5 of the WD942 describes tools for supporting targeting, which is one of the major subjects of TV-Anytime Phase 2.
The tools described in the WD942 are a TargetingCondition element included in a descriptor of a PackageInformationTable and a Condition element included in an Item element of a package.
In the WD942, the TargetingCondition element is described by descriptive information a usage environment including “TargetingCondition can have user condition, terminal condition, network condition and natural environment condition like the Moving Picture Experts Group 21 (MPEG-21) Usage Environment Description (UED) as shown in FIG. 1(b) and FIG. 7.” In other words, the current targeting condition has a structure of description tools of MPEG-21 Part 7, i.e., Digital Item Adaptation.
However, the current TargetingCondition element in the PackageInformationTable and the Condition element are not sufficient to support targeting as described in a Requirement document for standardization. To sum up, the current structure including the targeting information only on the package side can support only one aspect or group of an application scenario. Herein, the TV-Anytime (TVA) box extracts packages considered to be appropriate from the PackageInformationTable.
Meanwhile, the service provider can collect user profiles and transmit contents or a package to a particular target user. To support an application scenario that belongs to a recent application description, addition description on usage environment on the side of the TVA box should be added to TVAMain as the range of UserDescription.
In short, an extended description method is required to support a targeting scheme for the use of usage environment description tools as an extension of a UserDescription element supporting a targeting application with reference to the items of usage environment description tools.